


Toxic

by Lif61 (UltimateFandomTrash)



Series: Whumptober 2020 [13]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Breathe in breathe out, Chemical Pneumonia, Coughing, Day 13, Dean Winchester Whump, Gen, Illnesses, Medical, Medical Care, Medical Procedures, Oxygen mask, POV Dean Winchester, Pain, Season/Series 04, Unconsciousness, Vomiting, Whump, Whumptober 2020, wheezing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26993491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UltimateFandomTrash/pseuds/Lif61
Summary: Dean is captured by demons that use chemicals to torture him. Sam saves him, and now he's done his part. It's time for the doctor's to save Dean.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947223
Comments: 2
Kudos: 65
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Toxic

**Author's Note:**

> Whumptober 2020
> 
> No 13. BREATHE IN BREATHE OUT
> 
> Oxygen Mask | Chemical Pneumonia

Somehow, Dean wasn’t dead.

Maybe that wouldn’t last.

Mercifully, Sam was cutting him down from where he’d been strung up by demons. And he collapsed over his brother, wheezing too badly to be able to hold himself up. The fucking sons of bitches had tortured him, but not in the way he was used to with a beating or a knife. It was in a creative way that Alistair hadn’t been able to do down in Hell since it involved chemicals.

Fucking great.

If Dean was feeling much better, he’d mutilate the bodies, but the black-eyed bitches were already gone: courtesy of Sam.

“Dean, I got you. I got you.”

Dean coughed, then seemed to choke on that cough.

He just groaned, nodding his head.

Air rattled in and out of him.

“Water,” Dean begged.

“Okay, I have water. Just let me get you out of here. Can you walk?”

Dean nodded, despite how the lack of oxygen made him dizzy, and Sam hauled him to his feet. Dean’s vision blurred, his head spinning, but he walked. Somehow he walked. And time stretched on and on, every breath hurting, his nose and lips feeling like they were burning. But he made it to the Impala.

“What’d they do to you?”

Dean motioned to his face, which might actually have been burnt. “Put chemicals on cloth… made me breathe it in.”

A wince came from his brother.

Sam left, going to the cooler in the back, and soon he was back over, pouring water over Dean’s face.

“Okay, have to do your nose,” Sam said. “Whatever they used, it burned you up a bit.”

Dean held his breath, even when it felt like his lungs were going to pop, and let Sam clean his nose. Then Sam was gently dabbing at his face with his sleeve.

Sam passed him the water bottle. “Alright, rinse your mouth out.”

Dean did just that, Sam supervising him, and holding him steady so he wouldn’t fall over forward onto the cement.

Too bad that fucking angel Castiel wasn’t around. Dude could probably heal him in a heartbeat. The question was: Would he?

Probably not. That dude had a stick up his ass and a hard on for God’s will. Dean wasn’t part of that at the moment, he seemed. There wasn’t anything Castiel needed him to do, so he wouldn’t be getting any help. Of course people only cared about him when he was useful.

Dean was handed a new bottle of water, one he could drink from. And then he was helped to move his legs into the car, and he and Sam were on their way.

As the miles stretched by beneath the rolling tires, Dean’s breaths came a little easier. Something was still wrong though.

But he was fine.

He had to be.

“You know, I’m proud of you.”

Sam shot him a confused glance. “What?”

“You didn’t grab a straw and drink the Kool-Aid.”

Sam let out a huff, and then said, “Since you’re hurt, I’m gonna let that slide. But you’re a bitch.”

Dean argued, voice almost a whine, “You’re the bitch.”

“Jerk.”

“Better.”

“Whatever. As long as you let me get you to a hospital.”

“Sam, you try to take me to a hospital, and I’m putting you in one.”

Lovely. His brother looked at him when they were at a red light. Dean met that look, still feeling woozy. A weird, crackling sound was leaving him from his abdomen, a little lower than his stomach. He'd been tortured enough, and had held the knife enough times himself to know, that, yes, lungs did stretch all the way down there. They went all the way from the collarbones to the last rib. And his didn’t seem to want to work right, but he was going to be fine. He was.

Right?

Maybe a small part of him was panicking about the way his fingers were shaking, and the fact that his nails were a grayish-blue, but it was a part he didn’t want to listen to. If he’d listened to that part of himself in Hell, he wouldn’t have made it out with his little bit of remaining sanity.

“Yeah, nice try.” The light must’ve turned green, and the Impala purred underneath him, turning left at the intersection. “Doubt you could even pinch me right now.”

Dean cracked an eye open, reached out his hand, and did just that.

“Whatever. But you’re not winning a fight. You’re going.”

“Fuck y—”

“No,” his brother reprimanded him like he was talking to a disobedient dog.

That actually got Dean to shut up. That and the fact that the feeling of his lungs being close to popping with every inhale and exhale had just gotten worse. Dean’s hands tingled.

He struggled for breath each minute it took to get to the hospital, and before Dean knew it, he was in a wheelchair, Sam getting him in to the emergency room.

A nurse took one look at Dean and hurried him in front of all the other patients. Before he knew it, he had a room, and he was hooked up to an IV, medicine being injected into it, and there was a mask on his face. Oxygen. But something else too. It smelled kind of sour. It made him cough, and then he kept coughing. Sam tried to rush to his side, but the doctor held out his hand.

“The coughing’s good. It means the medicine’s getting in him. Alright, Mr. Winchester… deep breaths.”

Dean did just that, and it wasn’t long before he was asleep.

He woke up when the mask was gone, and ointment was being put above his lip.

Questions must have already been asked, and answered, papers having been filled out, because they didn’t bother Dean. And they didn’t bother Sam who was sitting in the plastic chair across from the bed.

Patients were wheeled by, some nurses working at the desk, and Sam went over and closed the curtains.

Dean was shuddering, maybe from the oxygen he’d breathed in in such a pure form, or maybe it was because he was starting to feel like he was going to be sick. The sweat on him suddenly felt so slick and disgusting. He tried to take deep breaths, but his body wanted to go into panic mode.

Sam took one look at him, and said, “He’s gonna be sick.”

The doctor called for a nurse, and before long, Dean was puking into a pink bucket. Blood came out with it, and when he coughed, the mucus was frothy, and pink.

There were tears in Dean’s eyes, and he didn’t bother to wipe them away.

He just laid back down, and tried to lose consciousness again. But he couldn’t this time. And he couldn’t breathe either.

God, he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe!

Dean tried to reach out to someone, to beg for help, but his lungs were full of needles, his head filled with cotton. Black spots were in his vision.

Dean lost consciousness.

And he stayed that way. He was blissfully unaware of the anesthesia given to him, of the tubes being put down his throat and into his lungs, of the ventilator he was hooked up to, of the bloodwork being done every four hours, of the medicines being injected to him, or puffed into the breathing tubes. He was asleep when the tubes were pulled out and they filled each lung with salt water, one at a time, to clean it out, was asleep through multiple x-rays.

It took days, almost a week, before Dean was out of his medical coma.

When he woke up, his throat hurt, but he realized he could breathe. And he was no longer in the ER room. This was his own room. Looked like he’d been admitted.

Dean wondered just how long he’d been out and what had happened to him. But he felt weak. Too weak.

Sam was sleeping by the bed, head leaning down against his chest as he sat in a leather chair in front of a window.

“ _Sammy,_ ” Dean rasped, voice tearing at his sensitive throat. “Sammy.”

Dean couldn’t speak loud enough, so he smacked his hand against the bed.

That didn’t wake him up either.

Fuck, he needed something. He didn’t know what. Pain relief? Water?

Luckily, Dean found a button to call in a nurse on the side of his bed.

When she came in, Sam woke with a start.

“I’ll let the doctor know you’re awake,” she said to him.

Dean nodded, and looked over at Sam as she left. Sam went over to him, gripping the metal rail on the side of the bed.

“How you feelin’?”

“Like my lungs have been violated.”

Sam gently pat his chest, looking exhausted, as if he’d been crying, and losing sleep. There was a trembling in his fingers.

“At least you can say that.”

“What, doc not think I was going to make it?”

“You had to be on a ventilator, Dean.”

“Oh.”

“And they did tests and procedures. It was...”

Sam swallowed roughly, and Dean reached out, gripping his forearm.

“It’s alright, Sammy. I’m still here.” Sam said nothing, so Dean tried to meet his gaze. Those hazel eyes were so heavy, he found he could only do so for a second. He turned away, his hand falling. And he breathed one word, glad that he _was_ breathing, that it barely hurt, that it wasn’t a struggle: “Thanks.”


End file.
